Forget The Reckless Things We've Done
by Azulsky
Summary: Sam and Dean run into some trouble in the Colorado Mountains. [Part Four of The Ruff Warriors Series]


A/N: This is the fourth part to a series. The other parts are titled: _What are we going to say?_, _Huh, don't quite know that one_, and _Normal Situations_. At this point, it woud be best to have read those to get this. Please enjoy!

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"Sam, you're an idiot."

"All I said-"

"Sam…" Dean glared towards the passenger seat, "if the situation called for you to do it, would you?" Sam stared at the road ahead, he only saw what the headlights touched. "It's too damn late for this," Dean rubbed at his eyes under the sunglasses then finally tore them off flinging them into the seat. "We should be sleeping."

"I didn't…"

"What you did or didn't mean doesn't matter." Dean slammed on the breaks making Sam brace against the dash.

"Dean!"

They were traveling on mountain roads in Colorado. Dean's attention was turned to the tree line outside his window.

"Dean…What?"

The road wasn't used often; no cars would meet them here.

"Sam," he didn't take his eyes off the forest, "you said they didn't find those hikers, right?"

Sam nodded,

"Nothing was found."

Dean sighed,

"I found 'em," he checked his phone reception before getting out of the car. Sam exited too, but didn't move more than a few feet away from the black vehicle, while Dean approached the trees on the side of the road.

"You don't sound too happy."

"They aren't exactly signaling to be rescued, Sam."

"Oh."

"Yeah," Dean slammed the phone closed, "be glad you can't see."

Sam almost asked how bad it was but bit his tongue instead. Dean moved to disappear behind the darkness.

"Whoa, hey Dean-"

"Sam, stay here." Dean didn't wait to see if Sam complied and faded into the trees.

"Damn it." He followed.

Sam couldn't see for shit. Really, at this point it wouldn't have mattered if he was blindfolded and spun around until his insides figured it would be necessary to exit his body at an alarming speed. At least then he'd see spots. Here, he couldn't pick up his white shirt.

He pushed through the darkness, hitting trees and snagging on branches here and there. Sam understood he wasn't smart in his decision to follow, but Dean should know by now not to go running off without thinking Sam would try to do the same. After a minute at his attempt Sam stopped his decent into the wilderness, leaned into a tree and scanned the area before him.

"Yep. I'm an idiot." Instead of using his eyes, Sam listened.

Most days Dean can figure out what is going on with a simple glance around him. Everything moves because something else, pushing and pulling. He's always been good at seeing the paths objects take, even people, which are much trickier. Emotions don't have the same force with everyone, so people end up taking different paths, move at different.

His path is very different from others with similar experiences. He knows this, understands his position. So when he ends up in the middle of the forest, chasing his own scent while knowing full well that it isn't. He gets a little perplexed.

In the middle of two trees Dean stops still as photo, eyes catching all and feels fear. It's not his fear he feels but another's. Whichever creepy this happens to be, it can feel the fear too. How Dean knows this, is a matter for a time when he isn't hunting around in darkness, sensing fear and death.

What feeds on fear is hard to kill; you fight it and feed it at the same time.

Dean cocks his head, listening to Sam's distant steps stop, and sighs. He's too far away for Dean to deal with, but Dean's eyes focus and finds his brother as he breaths it in the calm breeze moving through the darkened trees.

"Well shit, man."

Abandoning the original path he took, Dean moves fluidly toward his brother while watching for movement that he knows is coming. Calling out would be foolish and he's already dealt with enough of that today.

Sam's too far away to know what's after him. He never ever pays attention to the fact he's a fucking beacon for the lightless. Dean stopped the car on the road and didn't crash into the trees for a very good reason, one that can't follow a friendly request.

It moves faster than Dean; it was made for the dark, Dean was just retrofitted.

Legs work harder once eyes see it attack its mark. Surprisingly, Dean doesn't think any air is working its way in or out of him, yet he keeps speeding up.

That is until the dead get him. In which case, he falls flat on his face, crumbling hands scrapping at his back, pressing him down hard into the dirt on leaves. Large gnarly roots twist out from the trees, going deep into the ground only to come back up. His stomach scrapes along one as he fights what took him down. Silence follows Dean's actions but not with the dead.

"Hold still, this would be a lot quicker and easier if you held still." It forces Dean down again, after he had gotten up enough to kick out at the torn corpse.

For the record, Dean knows it's not a zombie. That would involve certain forms of magic that the beast currently attacking his brother does not possess. No, the thing just uses the bodies as extensions of itself. It can't do anything with the living.

Dean comes up with a right hook to the dead hiker's face, feeling the skin peel off bone onto his hand.

Everything has a heart. Whether or not it's the literally beating muscle that allows for blood to circulate doesn't matter that much. There's always a part that makes a thing whole, makes everything work. If there is one thing to learn and to keep with you is: if you want to make a clean kill find its brain or find its heart. This thing doesn't have a brain.

As hard as Dean can, he kicks into the chest of the corpse and it only takes him a minute to disentangle his boot out of the cavity before he sprints towards Sam.

The hiker pulls himself up from the dirt but comes down hard, unbalanced. Even dead, he's not used to his ribs being missing.

Sam's quite sure that pain exists in every part of his body. Not just in the surface, his skin and layer of muscle over his bones, but everywhere he is. His eyelashes hurt.

Strike that. Hurt is a scraped knee. Pain? That's just a cramp.

Agony. Oh, that is more like it.

Agony strangles his throat, keeping the screams inside his chest, fermenting. He knows the warmth spreading down his body is his blood, a blanket to his cooling self. Green eyes shift at each attack. It's the only thing Sam can see in the dark and that's only because they glow. It's the only way he knows where to throw his punches. Those stopped happening after he felt most of his blood coat the dirt below him. Now it's more like weak attempts at swatting, if even. Sam won't stop though, just because he's weak doesn't mean he won't try.

His eyes close, feeling another set of hands upon him, not as strong but have the same intent as the first pair. Long fleece sleeves brush against his shoulder. He tries to shake it off, instead it pins him, one hand on each shoulder. Sam bucks under the force and goes nowhere.

"Don't fight."

And Sam's eyes fly open, grabbing at the hands holding him down and tries to break their grasp. He can't see it even though the body that belongs to the hands is _right there_ he can't see their face. Sam knows there is a face. He's lived long enough to know when something is a _something_ and when it is a human.

His grasp slips right as he sees the green eyes slam into a tree then the hands holding him down disappear with a crash into the dirt next to him. The green eyes roar and attack into something Sam can't see or hear.

Sam knows he can't stay awake much longer; he fought the pull before, but now he knows he can trust himself to the dark. He just doesn't know why.

Bone snaps between Dean's hands and already dull eyes finally stop moving. A scream erupts from the green eyed creature as its pawn slips from deft hands. Dean growls, all focus on the blood covered creature. It backs away from his brother to come closer to him. Looking between Dean and the dead hiker, it swiftly calculates the odds of its survival, knowing that it is bigger than Dean but also understanding that this one was different than the man it attacked.

It knows its odds and is willing to play them so it leaps, matching Dean's growl; quicker than before, Dean moves into the attack, pulling the creature on top of him as he falls before rolling until he's the one on top. As all of this is happening, Dean's changing, blending into the darkness. Finally his whole body matches his eyes. The darkness bleeds from his hands onto the struggling beast. With one last strangled yelp before it's completely covered, the darkness slowly begins to slip back up Dean's solid black arms, taking the beast with it. Fur and claws dissolved into Dean's darkness, and he's left kneeling on the ground wondering why he isn't as freaked out as he should be about what he's just done.

Dean doesn't wait to check Sam's injuries before he pulls him up and sprints to the car. For once in his life Dean is ecstatic he left the keys in the ignition; as carefully and quickly as possible, Dean places Sam on the back seat then leaps behind the steering wheel and floors the Chevy; it's not long until he stops matching the car.

At the hospital, Dean almost forgets to put his glasses on. He tells the doctors it was a mountain lion attack. Perhaps he should have said bear but it was the first thing that came to mind and once the ground work to a lie has been set, it can't be altered.

It takes eighteen and a half hours before Sam even glimpses at consciousness and another seven before he can open his eyes. What he sees is Dean sitting at the foot of the bed, wearing the same clothes as before.

"You need a bath," croaks out Sam, wrinkling his nose. Dean sniffs himself and shrugs.

"Maybe I can get one of the nurses to do that for me."

"One of the male nurses."

"How'd you think you got clean?"

Sam shifts before responding and finds out what pain feels like through medications. Not that he didn't already know but it had been quite a while since he'd been injured enough to qualify for a hospital stay. As much as he loved his dad or brother, doctors always had the better medications.

"Did we kill it?"

"There was no we," seriousness invades Dean's tone, "but yeah, it's gone."

"If I brought-"

"If you stayed on the road like I told you-"

"Dean-"

"Sam-"

"You know me-" Dean swore and shook his head.

"This is not going to be our first conversation…" Sam couldn't really rebut since his eyes decided to close again. He forced them open again. "Where's Eddy?"

Dean jumped, his head coming up to look at Sam, and then sighed.

"What?" Sam asked.

"Dude, you conked out for like two hours."

"Oh."

"Yeah." Dean checked the open door way of the room then got up and closed the door. Still standing by the door he took off his sunglasses and rubbed at his eyes, sitting back down. He gestures to what's behind the doors, "They think I'm hung over or something." Sam stays silent, calculating how much medication he must be on to not feel the white gauze that covers most of his chest and the butterfly bandages on his face. He wouldn't be surprised if they upped his dosage so he could sleep most of the healing time off.

"Where's Eddy?" Sam asks again while picking at one of the bandages on his right arm. He wonders if it should be this hard to move.

"With all your talk of-"

"Suggesting," he doesn't bother to say more.

"_Suggesting_ that we cut off his manhood scared him. It scares _me_. I'd run away if you tried that with me."

Sam's eyes flew towards Deans,

"So you haven't seen him still?" Dean hasn't left Sam's side since they reached the hospital but he doesn't feel like Sam should know that.

"No Sam," Dean breaths," don't worry your pretty little face about it though, he's smart, just rest and we'll go get him and you _will _apologize."

"It was a suggestion," Sam forced out groggily, "not like I planned on doing it. I was giving him the option."

"Hey hey hey, calm down. Don't bust any stitches over it," Dean joked, almost.

Sam nestled his head deeper into his pillow,

"What about you? You going to sleep?"

Dean smirked,

"I don't sleep Sam."

"Oh that's right," fading, "you're the Terminator now," his eyes flutter, "the leather jacket explains it all…" And Sam's out again, Dean's pretty sure it's going to be a long while before Sam wakes up again so decides finally to go back to the motel, take that shower that he knew he needed, maybe even look for a runaway dog.

It's in the shower that Dean realizes he needs a towel, only the washcloths are left. Sopping wet, he throws his shirt on inside out and backwards, grabbing the pants on the bed; he doesn't bother to put on shoes for his trek to the main office. The blue of the shirt deepens a hue and the pants are sticking to him as he walks. At least he got the blood off himself before talking to the clerk.

"You part of the Freak Show?" The scrawny man asks, handing Dean two towels.

"What?"

"I just assumed since they left with him," letting go from the soft fabric, he gestures toward Dean, "and your eyes." Dean freezes, weaving a tapestry of obscenities within his head toward himself. "Where do you get contacts like that?"

Dean blinks,

"There's this great site on the net. Cheap prices." The man nods while Dean frowns, "Who's him?"

"Your dog."

"They left with Eddy?" The man nods again,

"That dog of yours got a mean bark on him."

"Listen, a few of us had our destinations screwed up. You know where they were headed?" Brows furrow together as the clerk thinks.

"Said something about Utah…yep, Utah." Dean shakes his head, makes a small smirk.

"Which town in Utah, we were still debating between two." The man shrugs,

"Why don't you just call your friends?"

"Yeah, of course, figured I didn't want to bother them, but I guess I'll have to." Dean makes another smile, slaps the counter in a friendly manner and says, "Thanks for the towels and the heads up." The man smiles back and doesn't see Dean run the entire length of the parking lot to his room, slamming the door behind him.

Dean flings the towels down, grabbing his boots while palming his keys, and barely remembers to snatch his glasses off the nightstand; only because they're next to his phone does he grab them. Nineteen seconds is roughly how long it takes for Dean to have the car roaring down the highway. He probably should have asked when they grabbed Eddy; they have a whole day on him. Going to Utah is out of the question without Sam. Dean punches the steering wheel.

"Mother Fucker." He barely hears his phone ring.

"What?" Dean answers sharply.

"Mr. Townsend, I'm calling from the hospital where your brother is being treated."

"What happened?"

"It would be best for you to come to the hospital."

"What _happened_?"

"There was a complication…your brother initially lost a lot of blood, which increases the risks involved in a transfusion."

"He had an embolism." He could hear surprise coloring her response.

"He had some trouble breathing which we found out was due to pulmonary embolism, yes, but that's not what is worrying us." Dean heard the woman, who he assumed was a nurse, sigh. "We think he might be clotting in his leg."

"Deep vein thrombosis."

"It might be, yes. Are you medically trained?"

"Something like that," and he hung up.

Going ninety, Dean jerked the car into a sharp a hundred and eighty degree turn.

Utah was out of the question without Sam.


End file.
